Category Archives: Women’s rights and gender equality

FGM ban in the Gambia under threat as calls grow to repeal law

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Women’s rights campaigners denounce ‘hugely regressive’ proposals from political and religious leaders to decriminalise practice

Political and religious leaders in the Gambia are threatening to introduce a bill to decriminalise female genital mutilation, eight years after the practice was outlawed.

Members of the country’s national assembly have backed a proposal for the 2015 law to be scrapped while the Supreme Islamic Council has issued a fatwa condemning anyone who denounces the practice and calling for the government to reconsider the legislation.

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Iran approves stricter hijab bill targeting those who ‘mock’ dress code

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Protestors face 10-year jail terms under new hijab and chastity bill, which UN human rights body says is intended to suppress women into ‘total submission’

Iran’s parliament has approved a controversial new bill under which women face up to 10 years in prison if they continue to defy the country’s mandatory hijab rules.

As well as harsher penalties on women defying the strict dress code, the draft law also intends to identify those who “promote nudity [or] indecency” or “mock” the rules in a virtual or non-virtual space.

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‘We never stopped protesting’: Iran’s youth take freedom fight underground

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Students tell of secret acts of defiance ahead of the first anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody

Young Iranians have taken their protests against the authoritarian regime underground one year on from the death in custody of a 22-year-old woman detained for allegedly wearing the Islamic headscarf incorrectly.

The death of Mahsa Amini on 16 September last year led to the largest wave of popular unrest for years in Iran and a brutal crackdown by security services in response, with hundreds of men, women and children killed and thousands more injured, according to human rights groups.

At the beginning of the uprising, one of these two women, both 25, was arrested at a protest gathering and spent 16 days in prison. One of her fellow inmates was Yalda Aghafazli, a 19-year-old protester who died under suspicious circumstances after her release

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Iran’s ‘gender apartheid’ bill could jail women for 10 years for not wearing hijab

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Shops that serve unveiled women could be shut under draft law UN human rights body says suppresses women into ‘total submission’

Women in Iran face up to 10 years in prison if they continue to defy the country’s mandatory hijab law, under harsher laws awaiting approval by authorities. Even businesses that serve women without a hijab face being shut down.

The stricter dress code, which amounts to “gender apartheid”, UN experts said, comes one year after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been detained for allegedly wearing the Islamic headscarf incorrectly. Her death, after allegedly being beaten by police, led to the largest wave of popular unrest for years in Iran.

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Taliban ban women from national park in Afghanistan

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Minister says women visiting the lakes of Band-e-Amir have not been wearing their hijabs properly

The Taliban have banned women from visiting one of Afghanistan’s most popular national parks, adding to a long list of restrictions aimed at shrinking women’s access to public places.

Thousands of people visit Band-e-Amir national park each year, taking in its stunning landscape of sapphire-blue lakes and towering cliffs in the country’s central Bamiyan province.

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Hospital detentions for new mothers challenged in Ugandan court

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Two cases to be heard this month could serve as legal precedent to outlaw the holding of patients against their will for unpaid bills

Two women who were prevented from leaving hospital over unpaid medical bills are to have their case against Ugandan authorities heard this month in a case that lawyers hope will end the practice.

Akello Esther Susan, 23, and NS (known by her initials) are jointly suing the government, two district councils and church dioceses over their treatment after giving birth in 2020 and 2021 respectively.

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‘Gigantic step backwards’: far-right gains in Chile threaten abortion rights

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Concerns mount as ultraconservative Republican party’s ‘right to life’ proposal could be enshrined in constitution

The hard-won right to an abortion in Chile is at risk of being overturned, activists have warned, as the country’s far right moves to enshrine protection for “the life of the unborn child and maternity” in a new constitution.

Concerns have grown over the ultraconservative Republican party’s plans to pare back reproductive rights in Chile as it now holds significant sway in the fate of the country’s constitutional saga.

“Clearly, there is great concern over the risks to women and children implied by the suggested amendments, which threaten the most basic rights of human beings,” said Lieta Vivaldi, the director of Alberto Hurtado University’s gender and social justice programme.

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Teenage girl dies after being forced to stay in a ‘period hut’ in Nepal

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Campaigners say efforts to stamp out custom of banishing girls and women during menstruation have been set back by Covid

A 16-year-old girl from Nepal has died as a result of the illegal practice of chhaupadi, where menstruating women are forced to stay in huts outside their homes.

Anita Chand, from Baitadi district, in the west of the country, bordering India, is understood to have died on Wednesday from a snake bite while she was sleeping. Her death is the first reported fatality from chhaupadi since 2019 and campaigners fear progress to eliminate the practice is being eroded.

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Women’s health at risk from UK aid cuts, Foreign Office warned

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Thousands more women will be forced into unsafe abortions and die in pregnancy and childbirth, ministers told

Hundreds of thousands more women will face unsafe abortions and thousands will die in pregnancy and childbirth as a result of UK aid cuts in 2023-24, Foreign Office ministers were warned in an internal assessment.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) published its programme allocations for the next two years last month, showing that official development assistance (ODA) spend is due to rise marginally in 2023-24 and then increase by 12% in 2024-25 to £8.3bn.

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Twenty years ago, Africa’s women’s treaty set a path to equality. We must be ready for the next steps

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The landmark Maputo protocol has led to huge gains in women’s rights, from abortion access to equal pay. But to go further will require political will and action

Signed 20 years ago, in the Mozambique city that bears its name, the Maputo protocol was a landmark treaty in the progress towards gender equality across Africa.

It promises equality and non-discrimination to women and girls in civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

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‘Gut-churning’: anger as Hungarian president addresses major women’s rights conference

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Katalin Novák, an anti-abortionist and promoter of pro-natalist policies, spoke at the opening of the Women Deliver conference in Rwanda

Some leading delegates at a women’s rights conference in Rwanda have expressed shock at the appearance there of the Hungarian president, an anti-abortionist criticised for an anti-equality stance.

Katalin Novák, an important player in the international “anti-gender movement”, was invited by the Rwandan government to speak at the Women Deliver conference in Kigali this week, where reproductive rights is one of the areas under discussion.

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Students barred from Iranian universities for refusing to wear a hijab

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Female students reportedly given sham disciplinary ‘hearings’, suspended from classes and threatened with ‘zero grades’ for defying head covering law

At least 60 female students in Iran have reportedly been barred from university for flouting the country’s mandatory hijab law.

Videos recently shared by citizen journalists show the harassment of women and girls in subways, streets and university campuses by disciplinary committees and pro-regime civilians. In defiance, female university students across the country have been recording themselves without headscarves.

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Urgent action needed to protect ‘dying’ Kenyan domestic workers in Gulf, say rights groups

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Deaths and alleged abuse of Kenyan women in Saudi Arabia fuels demands for Nairobi to act on human rights

Rights groups have expressed concern that not enough has been done to address the alleged mistreatment of domestic workers in Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia, after the Kenyan government moved to secure work opportunities abroad for its citizens.

“This is a matter of grave public interest,” said John Mwariri, a lawyer at Kituo cha Sheria, a legal aid organisation. “Many of our Kenyan citizens have been abused and are dying there. There is an urgent need for protections.”

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Peru violated rights of 13-year-old girl repeatedly raped by father, UN rules

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Authorities denied pregnant Indigenous girl her legal right to an abortion and ‘re-victimised’ her, UN child rights committee says

Peru violated the rights of a 13-year-old girl who had been repeatedly raped by her father by denying her an abortion after she became pregnant, the UN has ruled.

The United Nations child rights committee found this week that the Peruvian authorities had violated the rights to health and life of the girl, known by the pseudonym Camila, by failing to provide her with information and access to legal and safe abortion.

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Child marriage in decline – but will take 300 years to eliminate

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UN children’s agency welcomes drop in number of underage brides, but warns 12 million girls still getting married each year

The number of child marriages is declining worldwide, but at too slow a pace for any hope of eliminating the practice this century, Unicef, the UN children’s agency, has said.

In a new report, Unicef tentatively welcomed the reduction but warned that it was nowhere close to meeting its sustainable development goal of ridding the world of the practice by 2030.

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Hit TV drama sparks calls for reform of Egypt’s oppressive guardianship law

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Under Guardianship, broadcast during Ramadan, highlights the issues faced by women and children after the death of a father

Two Egyptian MPs have called for a review of the country’s guardianship law, prompted by the success of a TV drama broadcast during Ramadan.

On thursday, House representatives Amira El Adly and Mohamed Ismail submitted separate requests to the speaker of the house and to the justice minister to examine the impact of a law that critics say unfairly targets women and harms families.

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UN ready for ‘heartbreaking’ decision to pull out of Afghanistan

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Officials say it will leave in May if Taliban cannot be persuaded to let local women work for organisation

The UN is ready to take the “heartbreaking” decision to pull out of Afghanistan in May if it cannot persuade the Taliban to let local women work for the organisation, officials have said.

The warning comes after UN officials spent months negotiating with the group’s leaders in the hope of persuading them to make exceptions to a hardline edict this month barring local women from working for it, according to the head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Achim Steiner.

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African film-makers reimagine folktales as dark fantasy dramas for Netflix

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The six films include the tale of an ogre who preys on women, a sci-fi Nigeria taken over by AI, and a girl on a mission to end drought

Traditional African tales of monsters, genies and malevolent spirits have been reworked for a contemporary audience in a new Netflix series.

Film-makers from Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Mauritania and Uganda have turned six traditional stories into dark fantasy dramas that cover topics including domestic violence, suicide and child marriage.

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‘Historic moment’ as El Salvador abortion case fuels hopes for expanded access across Latin America

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Human rights court hears seriously ill woman denied procedure as advocates call for change in region with world’s most restrictive abortion laws

Human rights activists in Latin America hope that a historic court hearing over the case of a Salvadoran woman who was denied an abortion despite her high-risk pregnancy could open the way for El Salvador to decriminalize abortions – and set an important precedent across the region.

The inter-American court of human rights (IACHR) this week considered the historic case of the woman, known as Beatriz, who was prohibited from having an abortion in 2013, even though she was seriously ill and the foetus she was carrying would not have survived outside the uterus.

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Chile’s government pledged to put feminism into practice – has it delivered?

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President Gabriel Boric promised a feminist movement but conservative values remain strong in the country

One tumultuous year has now passed since Latin America’s first self-declared feminist government installed itself in La Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace, vowing to bring progressive, gender-equal politics to a quiet corner of South America.

Standing beside the country’s youngest ever president Gabriel Boric at his inauguration was Izkia Siches, the first woman to be named Chile’s interior minister and one of 14 women in Boric’s 24-person cabinet – the highest proportion of female ministers in Latin America and one of the highest anywhere in the world.

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